Tenant Notification Legislation

Posted on May 05, 2015

Given our housing crisis, one of the most important things we can do is to keep people stable in their housing. I recently asked our City Attorney to draft legislation to close a gigantic loophole in our city code that allows building owners to demolish rental units without even providing tenants with notice ahead of time, thus allowing them an opportunity to contest the demolition and effective eviction. Because an owner isn’t required to provide tenants in illegal units with notice, the tenant has no opportunity to contest the permit, for example, by appealing it to the Board of Permit Appeals. The legislation will require the same notice to all tenants – whether or not their unit is officially recognized – before the owner obtains a building permit to demolish the tenants’ units.